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A DANCE THROUGH THE FIRES OF TIME

9509 EXHIBIT & MISFORTUNE – 1980s part 1

This ‘decade’ is rather short, sandwiched as it is between the happy times at IBM in the early 1980s and the even happier times at the Open University at the end of the decade. It is fortunate that it is so short, for it contains some of the unhappiest times of my life!

In the early 1980s Derek Haslam was replaced as my (Biomedical) boss by John Hickox.  John was a rather strange manager, ex-army, whose brother was a leading orchestral conductor.  Where Derek had left me to continue to live in Molesey, and even paid my travel expenses, John insisted that I moved down to Basingstoke.  This was not particularly welcome, as my roots were in Molesey.

Having been forced to relocate to Basingstoke, by my new manager, I made the best of the move.  IBM's relocation package was quite generous.  You were allowed to get estimated prices for your current house from three estate agents, of which the middle one was taken as the guarantee from IBM.  Thereafter you didn't have to worry about selling the house.  I didn't finally sell the house in Molesey until something like three months after we taken possession of our new house in Basingstoke. 

We did the rounds of estate agents. It was the first time we'd been looking for house in a decade.  There were some interesting properties. One of them was a converted barn in Basing. The building society had some trouble with the survey, since the surveyor pointed out that the structural wooden beams had been laid directly on the bare earth. When questioned further, though, he admitted that it had already lasted 400 years, but insisted that it might run into problems in a thousand years time. It reminded me of my dealings with Otis in the UK, who had been asked to guarantee that they would service the lifts in a new building for the life of the building. Unfortunately, the building was the new roman catholic cathedral in Liverpool; and it had a minimum life of 1,000 years! The barn in Basing also had some timbers knocked out of place; but, once more, that was when Oliver Cromwell's cannon were firing on Basing House. Indeed, the fabric of the barn had been in-filled with bricks from this when it was demolished!

We eventually ended up with a detached house in the village of North Waltham.  This was a nice little village, relatively unspoiled, with just one new housing estate of the fringes.  Essentially it was commuting country for Basingstoke – but, as it was next to a motorway (M3) junction, some people even commuted into London from there.  The house I eventually chose was one that was owned by an expatriate who was still in Brazil. He had let the house out and the tenants, over a number of years, had rather spoiled the interior of the house -- certainly for presentation to buyers.  Furthermore, the expatriate didn't understand how prices were escalating the UK.  Accordingly I bought the house for just £64,000 and three years later I sold it for £125,000; though, in the meantime, I had to do a lot of work on it.

The three months leeway came in very useful, since we had house builders in to provide us with a proper utility room.  At the same time I redecorated throughout. It is much easier to do this if you have no furniture to worry about! I also completely rebuilt the kitchen. The tenants had, for example, literally sawn one floor-to-ceiling cupboard door in half, so that it was hanging loose. I replaced all the doors, built additional units from solid pine, as well as putting in a new built-in oven and hob. It ended up, complete with quarry tiling, looking very good indeed. The house itself had four bedrooms with a family bathroom and an en-suite shower room to the very large a bedroom; which had been added on as an extension.  Downstairs it had a utility room, kitchen, living room, dining room and study. All of this was set in a quarter on an acre plot; mostly laid to lawn.  It had been built something like 20 years before, and - once the work was done on it - it was very pleasant house

The problem was, of course, we had to move from Molesey where all our friends were. Indeed, before our move to Basingstoke, we had been living in East Molesey for nearly 15 years; so I had to adjust to a totally new life in North Waltham. My working life at IBM didn't change too much, except that the commute to work was now down to 10 minutes rather than three-quarters of an hour. However our social life was completely different. Being a fairly typical country village in the Home Counties, social life tended to revolve around the church. I'm not certain that this meant anyone was religious, but it was a useful focus for the life there.

Pat joined the choir in the church, and this became her way of making social contacts; at which, like most women, she is much better than I am. It did, though, mean that she had to sing every Sunday morning. It also meant that we had to at least put on the pretence of being God-fearing -- but I didn't find this was particularly troublesome since, being Church of England, it didn't require much in the way of actual effort.

The vicar himself was a cheery old soul, but we were warned not to feed him too much alcohol -- which seems to be a problem of many Church of England vicars. It also meant that I had to visit the church for the main festivals, especially Christmas. On the other hand, this had a certain sense of continuity with the past and it meant that Christmas became rather more meaningful.

As I say, Pat sang in the choir, and this made for some interesting events. Once each year they used to sing in one of the local churches in the village where Princess Margaret went for a holiday. Pat usually found herself singing immediately opposite Princess Margaret, who had commented on her singing. Fortunately, for Pat, the princess was very tactful.

The most interesting event, though, happened one Sunday when the choir had to attend a special service for a christening. Everyone was rather upset about this, especially as it was arranged at the last-minute. However when Pat was making her way there she suddenly realized there were lots of plain-clothes policemen wandering around. It turned out that the godparents were Charles and Diana. It became even more interesting, for the baby was the child of Sarah Ferguson's mother. It was, indeed, the first time that Sarah Ferguson had appeared with the royal family in public. This was just before her wedding and was the first test of her nerve. Pat's only comment was that, when this was a quite cold day, Diana was only wearing a thin dress; seemingly even then she felt it necessary to be a fashion model.

The most amazing aspect of it, though, was that the local reporter for the Basingstoke newspaper hadn't bothered to turn out. Thus she missed the biggest scoop of her life. Worse still, even when she knew what had happened, she tried to keep it from the newspaper itself. Thus the Basingstoke News, which potentially had one the biggest scoops of the year, found itself incredibly embarrassed by not knowing anything about it.

As I said, activities revolved around the church. Thus, I remember a residents’ evening at the local pub, which had its own nine-pin bowling alley. It was great fun – but, interestingly, I also met a local businessman there who was to feature in my later job at Mentor.

Another enjoyable event was a ‘rolling’ dinner party which started in one house, with the first course, then moved to another for the main course and then on to another for the desserts. It was very enjoyable, but it turned out that we had to provide a sit-down meal for 40 people at the same time. Amazingly, by borrowing just a few chairs, we actually managed to get 40 people sitting down in the house; which was essential since - being in the depths of winter - there was no way we could do it outside. The cooking was not too much of problem, since I just cooked very large pans of coq au vin and curry with rice.

So, all in all, we found ourselves having quite a good social life in our new home.

Pat even used to go the country dancing, and I initially accompanied her there until I realised that I had two left feet. Pat had two left feet as well, but she chose not to recognize it.

She and a friend also started up a small singing group, called Triangle, for which - as their most notable achievement -  they all had necklaces with silver triangles on. That was, though, the height of their achievement; for the actual singing -- they only ever had one concert -- was diabolical. Since then Pat has sung in reasonable choirs and has become quite good in the chorus. At that time, though, the group were really appalling. Pat was probably was the only one who could sing in tune.

We settled into a routine, therefore, with the church events and contact with just a few of our local neighbours. On Saturday we used to go into the local Sainsbury’s, to do our weekly shopping, and pick up fish and chips for our lunch at home. In summer we might vary this by going to local fruit farms and picking strawberries and raspberries. Life was pleasant, but I was still traveling around the country. Of course not long afterwards, having left Biomedical, I moved into the IBM marketing head office, which was just one floor away from where I previously was in the Basingstoke head office of GSD.

By this time Mike Martin had resigned, having lost the battle for leadership of the Biomedical in the UK, and gone to another biomedical company. I later learned that he had become a vice president, which shows the typical value of IBM personnel at the time.

He was replaced by Bob Warren, who had been working at the labs in the US on behalf of GSD.  Bob was a nice guy, who I enjoyed working with it.  On the other hand he was not the world's best salesman. Never mind, we were selling more than enough equipment to meet our targets. The other new joiner was John Lyman, our engineer.  John had been an engineering CE who travelled the world for GSD.  His move was a promotion, and he was quite ambitious. 

The only quandary I was faced with, however, was that I had started to worry about the problematical future of Biomedical Division.  By then Biomedical had already paid for itself, simply by leading the way for the PC; which was, at that time, a monumental success.  The principles underpinning the theory of the Independent Business Units had been successfully established.

On the other hand, when I looked at the calculations, it became clear to me that Biomedical could not be viable within IBM. It would certainly have been viable as an independent company.  Its turnover, backed up by the expertise incorporated in its personnel, would have made it a leading company in the biomedical field. The problem was that Biomedical Division had to carry the massive overheads that any division was subjected to by IBM. I reckoned that the division had to hit a revenue of at least $200 million per annum before it broke even within IBM.  As it was clear that there was no chance of us doing this, I sent a report to this effect to the EHQ (European headquarters), where it was grudgingly accepted.  To my surprise EHQ then bravely passed it on, with its backing, to the corporate board in Armonk.  At the same time, however, the new management team in Biomedical US were once more asking for greater investment to grow the division.  It has to be remembered that John Opel, who was then IBM’s global CEO, had set up the IBUs as his own personal baby – and his reputation was linked with them.  I was impressed that, despite this, he backed my recommendation and Biomedical Group was disbanded.

As this was happening, I was making a move out of Biomedical. Following my usual procedure, I talked to John Steel (the UK’s Corporate Head of Personnel) about the various jobs on offer and settled for one in Corporate Strategy. This was the IBM UK's part of IBM’s global corporate strategy group; covering DP division as well as GSD.  It looked an ideal position, but once more it was a bummer.  Surprisingly, it was a relatively conservative -- albeit highly political -- department.  Worse still, I was seen by its management as a junior, only fit  - as ex-GSD - to do the junior jobs.

In particular, I had been hired in – as I later found out -- to put in place a tracking management system for promotional activities. At that time there were something like a thousand marketing staff at the UK headquarters, spending something like £1 billion a year.  Management were worried that many promotional activities, which were started, quite often never got finished.  Thus, something like 1,000 activities were put into the plan at the beginning of the year, but only something like 100 were actually run. My job was to introduce a computer system which would monitor progress of each of these planned activities to make certain they took place. I had a team of development programmers at Chiswick, though I was still based at Basingstoke.  The problem was that, as I explored the state of affairs in some depth, it dawned on me that the situation was considerably more complex.  It was true something like 1,000 activities were started. It was also true that the list then was reduced down to 100, even before they were launched; by a form of natural selection.  Thus, it became obvious, as they progressed through this process, most of them didn't meet the requirements of the branches or the market.  Hence they were abandoned. Even after the 100 made it through to the field, only about 10 were really successful.  Indeed, the resources that should have been provided for the 1,000 projects were gradually switched until they were concentrated on just these 10. My reasoning was that any system which ensured that the resources would actually spread across all 1,000 projects, instead of being concentrated on the few successful ones, would in fact be disastrous. It would bar the ‘natural’ selection of the most important projects

Accordingly, I recommended to the board that they abandon the project and just implement tighter management of the successful projects when they emerged. The rationale for this was accepted by most senior management, but was greeted less well by my own management; whose baby the whole project had been.  Thus, with my successful advocacy also went my real job. Even so, I had to hang around for the best part of a year with very little to do.  Eventually I actually took to taking my Open University work with me and doing it at my desk.  When I was asked about this I said that I had to have something to do.

Thereafter I was really only involved in two projects.  The main one was the operational support for the marketing plan process. Each year IBM produced a massive marketing plan, which ran to around 400 pages. It was our job to bring this together.  Indeed, my first job was to shred -- personally -- all fifty or so copies of the previous plan. It was too confidential to be sent to the outside shredder so I personally had to collect them from all the senior managers; and then had to spend many hours shredding them by hand. The main fact, which impressed me most of all, was that a significant number of these marketing plans came back literally with layers of dust on them.  It was obvious that few of the plans had actually been opened during the year.

Accordingly I tried very hard to cut the plan back to under 50 pages. I failed, but I did manage to reduce it from 500 pages to something like two hundred pages.

In any case the main practical part of the planning process was a three-day meeting, away from IBM premises, where all IBM's senior managers were brought together to discuss the draft plan. Indeed, it really didn't matter what the published plan contained. What was important was what all these managers understood from the meeting.  It was one of those classic management situations where theory -- the written plan - said that one thing was important when the reality was another -- the face-to-face meeting with all those others involved -- was what really drove the whole process.

We met at a residential at a hotel not too far away from Basingstoke, where my two bosses chaired the meeting and I managed the operational side.  It was quite fascinating, especially as it gave me a significant insight into the IBM planning process; which was at the heart of my later book about IBM.

The other activity I was actually involved in came about almost accidentally.  A telex had come in from the States asking for a whole range of facts and comments. It came from someone who was unknown to the group. Their reaction, therefore, was to a “Pass it on to David, he can waste his time on it”.  As I worked my way through it, I realised that the questions were much more fundamental that anyone had appreciated.  Accordingly, I rang my contacts in the States and found out that the unknown originator of the telex was in fact the new corporate planning vice president worldwide! What I was working on was, it turned out, the UK's corporate strategy for the next five years.  I beavered away and put together a very comprehensive document.  I presented this to the UK management on the last day before submission, and then discreetly informed them who the recipient was due to be. Never have I seen so many managers trying so hard to rewrite a document in my life. Of course they couldn't really rewrite the main thrust of it. Thus, by default, I wrote the IBM UK corporate strategy for the next five years! I must say, however, that my version was a continuation of all the things that had made IBM great. The later disastrous changes, occasioned by the love affair with the PC, didn’t feature in it!

I also stirred up a storm when I discovered that the industry marketing departments, before the recent reorganisation the main driver for IBM marketing with 700 staff, had disappeared without a trace. All their staff had been reallocated to a range of new departments, but their responsibilities hadn't. Thus, there was a great big hole in the organisation - with a wide range of activities which had simply stopped. My management, who had pushed through the reorganisation, were again none too pleased.

As was often the case in my career, I had got up the nose of my management. Accordingly, I was not surprised when they told me I was to be shunted off to run EXHIBIT.  I was very upset and made this clear by management, since I thought I was being dumped. In fact it was best job I ever had IBM.

So it came about that I ran a very sophisticated IBM exhibition; called, appropriately, ‘EXHIBIT’. It initially ran for six weeks in the UK, although it then toured Europe for three more years. It was carried on no less than 22 forty foot container lorries, which brought traffic in Kensington to a standstill when they arrived – even though this was arranged for a Sunday. It cost £1.5 million for the UK's first six weeks. Over the whole 3 years the cost must have been near to £50 million, making it one of the most expensive exhibitions ever.

When I got to it I found that, despite my misgivings, the role was extremely fulfilling; indeed one of the most rewarding I have ever had. It meant, however, that I had to work out of IBM's South Bank office rather than the office I'd been working at the Basingstoke.

This meant joining the commuters every morning on the train from Basingstoke.  Luckily the South Bank office was only short walk from Waterloo, and at the time I was studying with the OU -- and hence was able to use my time on the train profitably doing my essays.

However, when we switched to being on-site at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, the traveling got too much for me.  The day was long and when I got back to Basingstoke I found myself reversing into pillars in the car park -- I was so tired.  Accordingly, whilst I was running EXHIBIT, about six weeks in total, I stayed in a hotel across the road from the site.

EXHIBIT was an attempt by IBM to address the very long term.  It had worked out, correctly I believe, that children would decide the future of computers; something that is proving true even now.  Accordingly, it invested in this traveling exhibition primarily addressed at interesting children in computers.  As it turns out, children probably would, in any case, have become interested in computers, but the intention was good; and certainly IBM invested something like £50 million in the whole project. In the UK it was rumoured that IBM clinched the deal for the site by making a substantial contribution to the funds of the Natural History Museum.  On the other hand, it was a superb site for the exhibition.

At the heart of the project was a portable exhibition hall.  This was designed by Renzo Piano, probably then the world's leading architect. It was a masterpiece.  It was made of laminated wood support structures in-filled with Plexiglas pyramids.  As a result, it looked something like a Nissen hut married with a hedgehog -- but it was beautiful in its own right. Indeed, the building was a marvellous piece of architecture.  We got more coverage in the architectural press than we got anywhere else -- though we didn't do too badly in the nationals.  I even had one garden centre owner who traveled all the way from Yorkshire wanting to buy it after we had finished with it.  I think he assumed that this was temporary building which would be destroyed once the exhibition was complete. In fact it moved on to the next site.  He was dismayed when I explained this and was told he would have to buy another built like it. He obviously thought it was very cheap way of getting a new building for his own greenhouses.  He was totally shattered when I explained that it probably would cost as much as £10 million -- Renzo Piano does not come cheap. 

In fact, there were two of the structures which leapfrogged each other from site to site. Thus, after the foundations had been prepared -- in our case in front of the Natural History Museum on Cromwell Road in South Kensington London - the leapfrogging set arrived to be erected on-site.  This was no trivial matter since the exhibition was perhaps sixty feet wide by hundred and fifty feet long. Just negotiating the 40 foot trailers onto the site was an achievement.  Indeed, the portable building arrived on the back of a score or more container lorries, and getting these into the site in South Kensington without disrupting the traffic was quite an achievement; even on a Sunday.  At the same time we also managed, whilst connecting all the megastream links which were needed, to take out most of the telephones in South Kensington.

We turned up on-site once the main building had been completed.  We had our offices in a compound of Portakabins hidden away in the bushes, not far away from the exhibit itself.  There was, though, strict segregation and the European team, who ran all the technical equipment, were in one Portakabin and we -- the United Kingdom contingent who ran the local logistics - were in another.  Our demonstrators, eventually something like 150 of them, were provided on rotation from trainees in our branches around the country. However, all my operations staff had to be temporary; hired from the local employment agencies.  Thus, there was distinct hierarchy. At the core of the work were the European technical staff -- running literally dozens of computers including one large mainframe hidden away in the shrubbery alongside our Portakabins. Then there were the (IBM trainee) demonstrators who ran the talks through the main part of EXHIBIT. Finally there was the admin team who handled all front of house material.  Indeed, the 'front of house' concept was important .  I tried, successfully, to imbue everyone with the feeling that this was a very theatrical venture.  Even the language was theatrical, with the daily opening being signaled as 'curtain up'!

Just a few days before the exhibit opened, the technical content arrived on just a handful of 40 ton lorries and was quickly put into position.  It took only a matter of hours to connect all of this up, and even less to take it out at the end.

EXHIBIT itself comprised a whole series of computer exhibits, alongside a path which led down one side of portable building and then back down the other side.  At each of these, uniquely for a public exhibition, there were one or two IBM trainees explaining to the passing visitors what the exhibit was about. The most memorable exhibits were: IBM robots assembling various things, at the time IBM was getting involved in robotics (mainly as it turned out for its own factories rather than for sale) , voice recognition -- which was very crude by present standards but could at least handle any voice -- and some nice little touch-screen demonstrations - such as one which took you all round New York. With the latter you were able to find information about any museum simply by touching its location - again this was well ahead of its time.

I loved the job.  I was totally in command. Although my boss - who reported to the board - also had an office in the Portakabins, he was rarely on-site. Accordingly I ran the day-to-day operations by myself.  I was lucky in the staff I managed to recruit.  Most of all, my assistant -- Katrina Surety -- was superb. I managed to get her a job in IBM afterwards: I guess that was IBM's gain as well as hers. Half of my operations staff were located in the entrance vestibule to the exhibits, where they handled the issuing of the very elaborate book of the exhibition which was handed out -- free -- to all visitors.  They also checked the tickets.

The other half were located in a small caravan some distance away, where the tickets were 'allocated'.  The problem was that in order to get the maximum flow through EXHIBIT we had to make certain that only a certain number of people were moving through the building at one time.  To achieve this I commissioned a software house to produce a programme which allocated bookings by five-minute slots throughout the day. Thus, people wanting to see the exhibition on spec turned up at the ticket office and were allocated a time slot; so they could go away and explore the Natural History Museum while they waited. However, as it was largely for children, we also pre-booked slots for complete schools to go through -- allocating them by the same five-minute slots.  The process for them was, however, rather different since they came via the Natural History Museum - which already had facilities for storing their bags etc and even for them to eat their lunches. This was a real bonus in running the event at the Natural History Museum.

To everyone's great surprise, this innovation worked extremely well.  The result was that in the six-week period we managed to get just over 100,000 people through the service.  There were great celebrations when this milestone was passed. On the other hand, it was a tearful event when we shut the whole thing down, especially where I hired a piper to lead the last visitors through the exhibition.  As he wandered through to the exit, with my staff literally in tears, the technical crew was already striking the exhibits ready to move on to the next site; at the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen.

The overall logistics were spectacular. In its first six weeks in the UK just under 100,000 people passed through it. The greatest problem was finding IBMers to staff it. During any one day we needed 70 staff, with a complex two-shift system to cover the manning from 9.30 am to 10.30 pm. To make matters worse, it ran for seven days a week. Of these 70 staff, at least 50 needed to be trained IBMers, to man the more than 20 separate exhibits. Recognising the inevitable problems (where, because of the training needed, these staff had to be at the exhibition for at least a whole week, and preferably for two) we concentrated on using trainees.

It was opened by the Tory Minister for Education, the government’s right wing guru, Michael Joseph. Give him his due, he took it seriously, and I spent a number of afternoons sitting with his parliamentary secretary, working up his speech. I thought I had better get the best police protection for him, since it was at the time when the IRA was very active, and he was a senior member of the cabinet. To my surprise I was told “He’s not on our list”, and the protection was refused. Even when I got the police sniffer dogs in to search for bombs before he arrived, the handlers wouldn’t send them under the structure – because it would have been too dangerous for the dogs. In any case, the handlers said, “they never find anything”! Eventually, the police did send a PC to ‘protect’ him. She was an 18 years old trainee!

IBM ultimately had nearly 200 trainees involved. Even so, we needed two admin staff dedicated (for a total of nearly three months) to finding, and then ensuring they attended, the 300 man-weeks of effort needed. We typically had to run with just 30 IBMers at a time, making up the difference with specially trained temps.

As I have already said, the EXHIBIT building itself was designed by Renzo Piano and he insisted on holding all the intellectual property rights to the building – so he had to agree to any changes we needed to make. When the building actually arrived, the emergency exits were boldly marked in green with Italian word ‘Uscita’; since it had come from Italy. As this was not terribly helpful for the British public, and was totally unacceptable to the safety inspectors, it had to be changed to the regulation ‘Emergency Exit’. Obtaining approval from Renzo for this change took the best part of two weeks of haggling.

Just as annoying, British Telecomm failed to deliver a key TP line in time – until I explained that I would point out this fact in ten foot high letters for all 100,000 visitors to see. The line was working within three hours after that.

Then, at the last minute – timed to perfection, all the computer equipment and exhibits turned up and were slotted into place. Set up by the IBM Europe team, which travelled with the exhibition, all the exhibits were up and working in a matter of hours. Some bits of it were, though, a bit of a cheat. It was in the early days of graphics, and we had one of IBM’s new terminals on display; showing wire frame manipulation in real time. Many visitors were intrigued by this and asked how much the terminal cost. They were shocked to learn that it cost more than twenty thousand pounds. What they didn’t know was that it was driven by a full scale IBM mainframe hidden on an air conditioned 40 ft trailer behind the bushes; and that cost several million more!

The contract staff became one big happy family. I was especially close to my assistant, Katrina Shurety. She was a fascinating girl. Her family had once owned most of Cannock Chase, but had frittered their money away on failed business ventures. She herself had previously worked for the city bullion merchants who had perpetrated a multi-million pound fraud, and she had – all unknowing – signed the duplicate certificates which were at the heart of the fraud. Accordingly, she was the only member of my various staffs who had to be given time off for regular interviews with the fraud squad!

We worked very long hours, from nine in the morning to six in the evening, with the general public, and then from seven to eleven, with invited IBM customers and guests. These sessions were by invitation only, for a very carefully selected group. In particular, we had a number of very high profile evenings for people such as Members of Parliament and government ministers.  I particularly well remember Shirley Williams, who was then very prominent in the newly launched SDP, arriving straight from parliament.  She is a charmer, albeit much smaller than you expect -- I guess only five feet tall.  I had the privilege of taking her around myself explaining what she was shown. She really is as captivating as she appears on television, and even more intelligent. The real hoot, however, was that two of the other people there -- very prominent in their fields -- tried to persuade me, successfully as it so happened, to introduce them to her.  It was clear that that they almost had a crush on her!

These evenings were a pretty much the same for the participants as the daytime ones.  The teams of IBM trainees provided the guide to the demonstrations in exactly the same way. However, we completed the entertainment by providing a buffet meal in the Natural History Museum.  In fact it was in the dinosaurs hall, which is immediately inside the main entrance. It took me a lot of persuading for the Natural History Museum to allow this.  They were worried by the idea of people wandering around with plates food near their precious dinosaurs.  In fact it was never a problem. Indeed, it was so successful that they themselves have, ever since, run such evenings; to raise funds for the Natural History Museum itself.

To add some class to the evening events, I hired a string quartet -- women -- who played on the first landing of the stairs leading up from the hall.  The effect was superb, as the classical music wafted down to our guests from the quartet. In their white chiffon dresses, the effect was almost heavenly.

In order to recruit them I had to find a theatrical agent. He proved invaluable when it came to arranging the end of EXHIBIT party.  For this, indeed, my agent had to recruit a singer and group -- in fact it was Belle who at the time was Britain's entry into the Eurovision song contest. There was also another room with a jazz band and yet another one with a disco.

The intention in giving the EXHIBIT party was to thank all the people involved, especially the hundred and fifty demonstrators who had been brought in from the branches.  Each came with their partner. Thus, we had coaches running - bringing something like 400 people - from all round the country; and then taking most of them back again -- at least those who were so sober enough to find the way to their coach. As this was largely a group of young people I asked Sarah, my daughter, what would be the best place to run the party.  To my surprise, she suggested the London Dungeon. This was way-out, since it clearly wasn't designed for such parties; but I booked it and it too has now become a venue for corporate entertainment!

The net result, as I have indicated above, was that - to cater for the party - we had to put in three stages with sound and lighting equipment; one for each of the bands and one for the disco.  We also had to bring in a complete kitchen, since the existing kitchen in their cafeteria just wouldn't cope.  All of these additions worked superbly well,

It was, indeed, one of best -- if not the best – party IBM had ever run for staff in the UK.  It was also a very boozy event.  An awful lot of the people there drank far too much. As usual, I catered for a bottle of wine per head. At the end of the evening, though, there were people literally lying on the road outside and I just had to leave them.  The following morning a number of the people attending, who came from IBM head office at Chiswick, were seen to be wandering around  asking everyone "How did I get home last night?"

The net result of this was, however, that I received my one and only formal reprimand.  Once EXHIBIT folded I left my new assistant to tie up all the loose ends. She was, as I have said, a very capable girl, but she didn't realize that you had to hide certain things. Thus, the IBM rules said that the maximum you could offer at such parties was half a bottle of wine.  This was always ignored, but the catering arrangements were arranged so that the other half of a bottle was hidden in other costs. Katrina didn't know this and left them in full view.  The net result was that I was hauled before the Director of Corporate Affairs and handed the formal notice of reprimand; a very unusual occurrence in IBM. The really hilarious aspect of this was that, at the same time, he handed me an award -- the 'Exceptional Achievements Award'. This was handed out to less than a hundred people worldwide -- out of 400,000 staff in those days.  It was IBM's top honour.

I have it hanging on the wall even now, though it says it was awarded today 'David Merrer'. IBM was never a very good at getting the details right in such matters of recognition.  I remember one of the main board directors of IBM getting his 20 years watch, a very expensive one, from the company and discovering that they had spelled his name wrong as well!.  He was even more mortified when his fellow board members took him out for an evening meal, and he found himself paying for it because everyone else had not got enough money!

Being once more out of a job, I was delighted when at long last I was given a job in PC Group; a job I had thought would ideally use my talents. Indeed, I had always been keen on the new personal computer. I saw it as a way to the future, which of course it was; though eventually not in the way that IBM wanted. Accordingly, when -- at the end of my period running EXHIBIT -- I was headhunted by the industry marketing manager from the PC group, I thought I had it made. The paradox was, though, once more that the job choices I myself made -- which I was very enthusiastic about the time -- nearly always came to grief. This was no exception! Indeed, though I did not know it at the time, this was the end of my happy times with IBM, and the start of a period of considerable unhappiness in my working life.

I got into the PC group, not really knowing my boss, to discover that he was somewhat less dynamic, and much less capable, than he had presented himself as being. Having come from the typewriter part of IBM, he tended to have a quite narrow vision. His group, which comprised me along with a student trainee, was supposed to be working on developing industry approaches for IBM. In this context, I'm not quite certain why my boss had chosen to go after the farming market. This surprised me, since it was not a market that had the expertise or resources to buy large numbers of PCs. Never mind, loyal as ever to IBM, I went out to try and maximise the opportunity.

Thus, I went round the government departments responsible for the industry – without, however, obtaining any of the support I found for Biomedical. I also found some of the emerging software houses that were going to address this market. We had to get into bed with these software vendors if we were going to succeed, for no farmer would buy a PC simply to play with. The problem was that – within days - it became obvious that I was much more competent than my boss. This came to a head when my boss made a silly mistake, which I recovered for him. Unfortunately this was obvious to senior management. He was wont to make such mistakes. Not long afterwards, for example, he arranged for a stand at the Royal show, which was backed up by a glorious picture of a hillside with wheat growing on this; beautifully mixed with red poppies. Unfortunately, he hadn't realized that poppies were not seen as beautiful by farmers, but were seen as weeds!

Whatever the reason, and it must have been something like this since I was only in the group for a matter of a few weeks, one day he came back and brusquely told me I was no longer wanted. What he meant by this was not terribly clear, but he said that it meant that I should urgently clear my desk and go home! The ostensible reason for this was that a serious slander about me had been uttered -­ probably by him -- at that morning’s PC Group senior management meeting. I still don't know what the exact slander was, but it was certainly very powerful for he was -- apparently -- instructed to get rid of me.

On the other hand it might have had more complex roots for I had already put in a complaint, as part of the ‘speak-up’ process, which was already under way on the subject of a delay in reviewing of my ‘level’.

Anyway, I packed up and went home; and started a slander suit against IBM. The PC Group handled it very badly. The only person who handled it well was, once more, John Steele -- the Group Personnel Director. Everyone else did almost exactly the wrong thing. On the other hand, John -- every time I saw him -- was calm, collected and helpful. He tried very hard to persuade me to go back to IBM

The problem was that I knew that once I got the sort of reputation attached to me by the slander, then my future in IBM was limited. Moreover, it seemed obvious that, by that time, the IBM was going into a massive downturn -- as of course it soon did -- and that the hunting season would be opened on ‘wild ducks’ like myself. Later all that happened, as I had predicted. It meant, therefore, that I had to get out of IBM no matter how hard John Steele pleaded.

The defamation case dragged on, and I even hired myself not just a solicitor but a defamation counsel as well. Seemingly all counsels always advise their clients to drop the case. I suspect, as the slander was not really defined, that he was probably right. But I was determined to get some redress. In addition I was certain that, at that time (though certainly not later), IBM would not want to make an issue of it.

I was right, in as much has IBM eventually settled for £46,000; equivalent to something like two years salary at the time.

This, however still left the with the rest of my life to live.

Following my damaging battle with PC Group, IBM had to find somewhere to place me.  Accordingly I was tossed back to Derek Haslam once more.  Derek was at that time the head of the Basingstoke location, which had been designated to be the marketing centre for the whole of IBM United Kingdom. Within a matter of four or five years, though, the whole project was abandoned and different structure was put place -- leaving Basingstoke out on a limb.  At that time, however, it was relocating something like two and a half thousand people to a range of buildings across Basingstoke.  Under Derek, there was a manager heading up the team, Alan, who had been previously had been in admin.  I was really rather an anomaly in this team, but I got on with the work and quite enjoyed it.  My specific responsibility was, paradoxically, moving PC group into a dedicated new building.

In essence this meant that I became the client of the IBM Estates Group, who were fitting out the building. It had been spec-built, but the cabling provision had been found to be of a poor standard, not the high standard claimed.  From IBM’s point of view, it was supposed to be good enough for the future requirements, not just those of the day.  Accordingly, it had been assumed, by myself as well as everyone else, that computerising every workstation would mean that less space would be required. In reality it turned out that the space needed, was more than doubled. Thus, instead of the ordinary desk, the new workstation had to provide space for the PC keyboard as well as printer.  This, by itself, added 50% to the footprint of every desk. In addition we had to provide fast printer rooms.  The fast printers, in those days, made an enormous amount of noise, since they were impact printers. As a result they had to be screened from everyone working in the main areas. In addition a number of service rooms had to be located, where the network service connected all the PCs to the network.  Finally there was a large computer room which provided the interface with the rest of IBM.

All that was bad enough, but the new requirement was that people also had to communicate, face-to-face, with each other.  Accordingly there were a significant number of conference rooms to be provided, as well as conference areas amongst the workstations.  All in all space required was at least 50% higher than in a normal office building; and even higher than our own very pessimistic estimates!

To further complicate matters, the building was wired through troughs in the floor.  The spec builder had thought that these would have provided ample capacity for all future years of DP use.  In fact, they proved inadequate for even the start of our own operations, and we had to hang cable trays from the ceiling over the various workstations.  Needless to say, being IBM, these were very elegant cable trays, with built-in lighting etc, but they were still an intrusion.

Indeed, IBM generally underestimated the amount of the network support needed.  It had originally been reckoned that the new UK network would need five TP mainframes to control communications between the various sites. It actually had to install something like 50 of these mainframes with hundreds of megastream lines between them. I remember, at the time, Basingstoke seemed to be full of BT teams pulling new cables.  Almost every roundabout had a BT van sitting on it!

It also meant that the very sophisticated IBM 3750 telephone exchange was found to be inadequate, and a specially upgraded system had to be built which could handle all the traffic.

There were also some especially interesting DP experiences while I was in the job.  Thus, IBM decided that it wanted to test its fallback position in terms of its back-up equipment.  The idea was that, in an emergency, IBM could switch to a backup system and be on the air again in less than 24 hours.  Accordingly they decided to test this.  Unfortunately, despite the fact that everyone knew exactly when the system was due to crash, it took nearly a week to get the system back up again.  This was embarrassing in terms of service within IBM, and it left it us wondering just how long they would take if the disaster hit unexpectedly!

The other story was that the whole of the worldwide computer network which linked the factories was brought down for more than a day by a simple problem.  The system, down at Portsmouth, had backup at every possible level.  It had backup mainframes, memory backup, and extra power supplies.  Unfortunately, the mainframes were water-cooled and the cooling towers for this were some distance away, connected by a single underground channel. This became blocked by weeds, and the resultant lack of cooling brought the whole system down.  Thus, IBM's marvellous worldwide computer network had to be rescued by frogmen swimming through this channel cutting out the weeds.  This, for me at least, provided a nice picture of the frailty of some modern technology.

There were other problems. One day the system wiped everyone's diaries, which were held on the computer.  This meant that nobody knew what they were doing for the next months; and the building was full of managers rushing backwards and forwards, like headless chickens, trying to establish what meetings should be in their diaries.

It was an interesting job, not least because I was also involved with a section of the laboratory which was sharing the same building.  This meant I got inside the actual lab. In fact, like most IBM laboratories, it was just an office building where the labs had rather more powerful desktop computers connected to very powerful mainframes. 

The only real hang-up in the fitting out of the new building was the lighting. The architects wanted very trendy pools of light, concentrated only on the desks.  I thought that this would not be bright enough and proper working conditions also required overall lighting as well. I was overruled.  I was overruled, that was, until I brought the environmental people in to test the light levels. The resulting light levels were, in fact, below the legal limit.  It cost £50,000 in extra lighting

I found the whole process of snagging quite enjoyable.  I don't know why, but it was a bit of the detective mystery looking for things which were wrong and needed to be righted. I remember Derek Haslam who had done much the same job for the GSD head office when it moved to the Basingstoke location, telling me that he found a situation whereby - if there was a fire - the people had to decide whether to escape or fight the fire; since the cupboard doors that hid the fire hoses, when opened, blocked the fire exits!

Eventually, however, I found myself once more on the dole, a not particularly happy experience. There was one good outcome. As one of his parting statements John Steele suggested that I write a book about IBM. I did just that and it was eventually published by Kogan Page It became a big seller in the UK, selling some 11,000 copies. It even was taken by the Japanese. In addition, it was due to do well in the US as well. Business Week were going to do a full page feature on it - and had even taken their photographs for this. Then the US publisher went bust, in the middle of the launch, so I didn't even get my $10,000 of advance royalties there, and it couldn't be relaunched with another publisher!

My forced departure from IBM led to my setting up my own business. This was something that, like many of my contemporaries, I had always wanted to do. The only difference was that – being ambitious as always – I tried to set up a medium sized business; with 20+ employees and a projected turnover of several millions! Yet it too proved to be a disaster, full of personal trauma.
 

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